Egyptian military seizes 10 vehicles for smuggling arms via Libyan border

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The Egyptian military has foiled a smuggling operation by seizing 10 vehicles loaded with arms attempting to cross the border into Egypt from Libya, a military spokesman said Thursday.

“The operation resulted in destroying 10 four-by-four vehicles loaded with weapons, ammunition and smuggled material,” the military’s spokesman Tamer al-Refaay said in a statement.

Suffering from repeated terror attacks back home, Egypt is very concerned about its western border with eastern Libya which have been a point of infiltration by militants between the two countries.

Since May, the Egyptian air force has destroyed at least 52 vehicles loaded with arms while attempting to cross the border into Egypt along the western border with Libya.

Egypt’s Western Desert witnessed a terrorist attack that killed at least 21 soldiers in July 2014. In February 2015, IS militants released a video showing the beheading of 20 Egyptians near the Libyan chaotic city of Sirte.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppling former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 to end the one-year rule by the currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

The country has been working with Libya’s neighboring states to reach a political settlement in Libya, which is torn by a civil war and run by two rival administrations, one in the capital Tripoli and the other in Tobruk city in the east.

Egypt sees Libya’s stability as important to maintaining its own national security, secure its western border, and uproot the cross-border terrorism.